The Vinotinto tapas bar in Valladolid.
**1.- Casasola Beer (Valladolid) **. It turns out that Valladolid, in terms of beers, is the Spanish Bavaria for raw materials: 80 percent of the malting cereal of the Peninsula is produced here and the water is rich in lime. Bad for commercial washing machines, this is great when it comes to brewing. So Half a dozen craft brands have emerged in the province, of which the most successful is Casasola , which has its own barley fields and an underground spring that brings highly filtered water from the Sierra de Segovia. In a year they have achieved a name among connoisseurs, an acceptable presence in Madrid and Valladolid and above all a very rich beer, with recognizable smells and far from the monolithic flavors of those with added carbon.
If you approach the 14th century Benedictine farmhouse of Single house (on the Villabáñez road, four kilometers from Valladolid), the Perdomo-Spínola brothers give you a tasting and explain the double fermentation and the malts and natural carbon. And that's when you risk that the relationship with your lifelong bottle will never be the same again. Here they follow the Italian techniques, they add honey and walnuts to their Silos beer and they take all the nuances out of their blonde Benedictine and they explain everything so well... A drink is a crush. You'll soon see her there: its 16,000 liters per month will double in a year.
**2.- Cantagrullas cheeses (Ramiro) **. Rubén Valbuena is a 30-year-old geologist from Valladolid who, after traveling around the world with his wife and his four children, decides to settle in Ramiro and **almost double the population (there were 8)**. There they apply what they have learned in the dairies of the land of their mistress (France) and begin to make raw milk cheeses from Castilian sheep. Fresh cheese is not processed here, and they had to request special permits. In the end he has been worth it, and its Juncal, washed with brine, or its Torrejón, with a crust of wood charcoal powder are up there with the French on which they are based.
His strategy was to be present on social networks and distribute cards everywhere before even putting the first cheese on sale. In a year, he already sells in the Madrid markets of San Miguel and San Antón and in delicatessen stores, as well as on his website.
Cantagrullas fresh cheeses
**3.-Natural Shrimp (Medina del Campo) **. If there are Chinese restaurants in Las Hurdes why wouldn't one be able to eat some prawns from Medina del Campo . The company Natural Prawn (which does not sell prawns, but prawns) has 24 tanks with 7,000 cubic meters of space with which they can produce up to 150 tons of prawns per year, triple the national production. So far only crazy Texans had done anything like this inland. In June they began to bring the first live specimens of this captive-bred tropical crustacean to restaurants and markets in Madrid . As the first lobsters become popular and begin to grow, La Tapería in Plaza de Medina del Campo already serves Castilian shrimp tapas. No frills, but as fresh as some prawns can be that have only traveled a few meters to reach your table.
**4.- Arranz Pastry (Pedrajas) **. I couldn't explain what it is that turns the Julián Arranz sweets into something unique. He could talk about the two dozen awards and mentions he has achieved before turning 30. Or point out how far his cakes are coming, and say that this very week he is in the Maldives, teaching at the University of Male, the city whose TV has broadcast the preparation of one of its desserts live. Or explain how he had to crystallize the wisdom of the two generations of pastry chefs that preceded him in a boy who seems shy, but who must become the complete opposite when it comes to investigating and experimenting. To verify it you are going to have to go to his town and eat one of his sculptural cakes , of those who are embarrassed to put the spoon. And you better go soon, because the most original ones fly right away . And by the way, stop by the Frías patisserie (Marcos Salgueiro, 2, Olmedo, 7 kilometers away), where they have been making a pastry cream for decades that is hard to beat. And then someone explain to me the x-files of the sweet aliens in this little corner of Land of Pines.
5.- Tomas Postigo (Peñafiel). A chemist by training, Tomás Postigo defined with Protos what modern Ribera del Duero reds would be. That was 25 years ago. Afterward, he would create **Pago de Carraovejas** from nothing. Now, he has finally decided to put his name on the labels and trust him and the wine itself to sell it: he does not appear for prizes, according to Javier Melero, the manager of the winery. The result is a Crianza 2009 in which the selection of the Duero Valley grape is essential. (it's mostly tempranillo, but also merlot and cabernet sauvignon) and that it's going to be the classiest thing you'll drink this year. That is if you manage to get one of the 100,000 bottles that it has put on sale and that are around 18 euros.
**6.- The Pharmacy (Matapozuelos) **. Pineapple juice is drunk in Miguel Ángel de la Cruz's restaurant . The strange thing is that this pineapple is not the tropical one, it is the green albar pineapple, which abounds in the pine forests of the area . Miguel Ángel is one of those chefs who looks around and sees things that no one had seen before, in the style of Ángel León in El Puerto de Santa María, but dry land and, for the time being, without a Michelin star. His menus are full of medicinal plants (perpetua, thyme, rosemary, lavender...), pine nuts, thistle, pigeon and the same beets that feed the chimneys of the Olmedo Sugar Factory.